This following generally relates to dynamic merchandising and, more particularly, relates to a system and method for providing product recommendations.
There are an increasing number of business to customer (“B2C”) websites that allow customers to purchase products online. In using these systems, and at various times during the purchasing process, the website may offer recommendations of other products that the customer may also be interested in purchasing. These recommendations can serve not only to increase sales, but also to drive awareness that the merchant carries a particular product or brand.
By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,722 discloses a system for recommending products to customers based upon the collective interests of a community of customers. For providing recommendations, a similar product table is created, using an off-line process, that functions to map a known product to a set of products that are identified as being similar to the known product. In this regard, similarity is measured by a weighted score value that is indicative of the number of customers that have an interest in two products relative to the number of customers that have an interest in either product. The numbers utilized to establish similarity in this manner are typically derived by examining invoices to determine when the two products appear together and when one product appears exclusive of the other product. The weighting value may be indicative of user ratings provided to products and/or a time duration since a product pair was last purchased.
In addition, many of the B2C websites sell products that are demographically sensitive. That is, it is assumed that any given product may appeal to customers only if the customer falls within a certain demographic category. These demographic categories might include an age range, an income range, a particular sex or sexual orientation, a particular marital status, a particular political view, a particular health status, etc. Thus, certain websites attempt to deduce demographic categories for customers based upon prior purchase histories of that customer and/or expressed product preferences provided by that customer. One such website is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,980 which provides product recommendations by correlating product ratings provided by a customer with product ratings provided by other customers within a purchasing community.
While these website product recommendation techniques may be useful in the B2C environment, what is needed is an improved system and method for providing product recommendations, especially in the business to business (“B2B”) environment where products may have less customer-demographic sensitivity and where products do not have fads, trends, and/or fashions.